Question: what's the difference between Microsoft Windows 2003 Server and Emmentaler cheese? Answer: both are full of holes, but at least you can eat the cheese. On the day when the US Department of Homeland (In)Security had decided - in a zillion dollar deal - that all its computers would run Windows (on Dell hardware), it was revealed that Polish hackers had blown a huge hole in the software. 'This is one of the worst Windows vulnerabilities ever,' a security expert told CBC News. Until Windows junkies had installed the security 'patch' issued by Microsoft, he warned 'it will be Swiss cheese - anybody can walk in and out of their servers'. To cap it all, Windows Server 2003 was the first Microsoft product sold under the 'Trustworthy Computing' intitiative launched last year by Bill Gates, who hailed it as a 'breakthrough in terms of built-in security and reliability'.

Who said satire was dead? It only goes to show that anything connected with computers and government is fraught with difficulty.

When our own dear Administration wanted to get its 'gateway' web site up and running, it turned in desperation to Microsoft (and Dell) as the only way of getting the job done this side of eternity. And the site was duly operational on the appointed day, much to the satisfaction of the preposterously named 'e-Envoy'. The only problem was that in its first manifestation it could only be properly accessed by citizens using Microsoft's browser. (And before the Envoy - who is touchy on the subject of Microsoft - complains, I should point out that the gateway's early preference for Redmond software has now been rectified.)

New Labour came to power determined to 'modernise' Britain's government. The Administration's formative years coincided with the dot-com boom, and some of the frenzy rubbed off on ministers. This had two consequences. The first was an unreflective linking of information technology with modernity and reform. The second was a predilection for windy rhetoric. Britain would be transformed into the country most congenial to e-commerce. Every school child would have an email address. Every school would have broadband. All government services would be online by 2005. And so on.

Well, we're now 18 months away from 2005, so how is Blair's eGovernment project doing? Last week, a provocative new iSociety report - 'SmartGov: Renewing Electronic Government for Improved Service Delivery' by Noah Curthoys and James Crabtree (available from www.theworkfoundation.com) - argues that more has been achieved than Britain's technophobic media acknowledge, but frets that the overall eGovernment project needs a new infusion of political commitment if it is to make any lasting change in the way Britain's rulers and their subjects interact with one another. It also recommends that some categories of citizen ought to be compelled to use online services when dealing with the government.

The nightmare stalking the report's authors is not that New Labour's targets for putting government online will not be achieved, but that hitting the targets might make very little difference on the 'modernisation' front. Already, for example, over 50 per cent of services are online, but only ten per cent of the population have ever used them. The Inland Revenue has built a magnificent system for online filing of tax returns, but only 70,000 people (out of a possible 8 million) use it.

Critical media coverage of failures of government IT projects (think DSS, passport office) reinforces public scepticism about eGovernment. And the problem is exacerbated by the fact that those people who have most need to interact with the state (because of being poor, elderly or ill) are precisely the groups who feel most uneasy about using unfamiliar, online, channels. The battle to put government online has been won. But the battle to put citizens online has only just begun.